


Leave the Lights On

by oisiflaneur



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Continuation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-01 09:06:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8618200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oisiflaneur/pseuds/oisiflaneur
Summary: She just laughs at him, the lights embedded in her chest blinking in time. "No, dummy, it's just coptic! Or, well, I guess it's greek. I'm not big on the classics, you'll have to ask Masters." Her face swivels back and forth for a moment, a habit that Simon has come to recognize as her version of tilting her head thoughtfully. "I think she said that it's pronounced Ni these days, but in the old alphabet it was Nu."Simon pauses for a long moment before he lets out the audio imitation of a sigh. He should really be used to scientists thinking that they're clever by now. Even if they're the ghosts of scientists.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> commission for my lovely pal tin, who wanted to explore the fact that robin is still sitting outside theta by the end of the game, and... it got a little out of hand. there might actually be a continuation here, since there's ideas i couldn't really fit in.
> 
> this isn't really meant to be fixit fic, though it IS optimistic about everybody's functionality. i've assumed that anybody who used a pilot seat is a potential sentient bot, and there are possible multiples wandering around; also that since simon didn't just keel over after he destroyed the wau that they're able to work independently once up and running. finally!!! i went with the choices that i made on my first blind run, so carl is still screaming somewhere in upsilon, simon didn't delete the divesuit version, etc.
> 
>  **content warnings** are: spoilers for the whole game, and that's pretty much it! i guess cw for the fucking ocean, because fuck that thing, man. it's too big and dark. and also for me being a filthy transhumanist and clearly biased, because copies of people are still people goddammit
> 
> my general writing tag is [here](http://oisiflaneur.tumblr.com/tagged/graywrites) for drabbles and news!

Everything is dark.

Everything is dark, and it _stays_ dark, for a long time.

Simon Jarrett begins to think that maybe this, actually, for real this time, is the afterlife. Or, more accurately, the lack of one. He begins to think that oblivion isn't so bad, when you try it out for yourself.

But there's the creak of steel bending under ocean currents, and small scuttling noises in the gloom, and he begins to realize that he's still alive; just trapped in the lack of light. 

He has no idea how long it takes him to wrestle his corpse free of the debris. There's probably an internal clock in his systems, but he doesn't want to examine himself long enough to find it. Eventually, he wrests himself out from under the collapsed pilot seat and fumbles his way to the edge of the dome.

Feeling his way along the curvature blindly, cautiously, he eventually finds a gap in the metal. Maybe it even used to be a door. He only has one set of digits to feel out the shape of it; but he knows that's a blessing in disguise. The force that ripped his hand off crushed the edges of the suit closed around his wrist, and the clunky armor is the only thing keeping him intact under the weight of the ocean.

Once he's out on the abyss floor again, he takes a proper look around. It isn't much brighter, but the distant orange sodium lamps each feel like a miniature supernova to his sensors.

But he knows he'll adjust. That's all he's done since he woke up -- since he was _born_. In both senses. He listens, and he adjusts, and he _adapts._ And, apparently, he survives.

It's arguable whether that's a pro or a con.

* * *

And so, time passes in the trench. Simon pointedly continues to ignore his internal clock. There's a part of him, somewhere, buried in his core programming, that simply can't do that; but he willfully blocks it out. He tells himself that it's because even an atomic clock will probably be off kilter, by now.

So, _ostensibly_ , he still has no idea how long it's been. How many solar cycles he wastes wandering the seafloor at the bottom of the abyss, lit only by flickering bioluminescence and the rare blazing lamppost. His only company is the twitchy skittering of marine life at the edges of his vision, fleeing from something larger and potentially predatory.

He starts to think he'll go crazy. He starts to think that he already has. He starts to think that he always _was_ crazy -- because if it's a dichotomy, then he'd have to have been sane to begin with. He starts to think that he never knew what sanity meant.

He decides that, even if he imagined the sun, it'd be worth it even just to _try_ seeing it again. And it's not as though he doesn't know which direction to go in. 

After all, there's nowhere left to go, but up.

* * *

The climb is grueling, even without muscles. 

But, then again, maybe it would be easier with two functional hands. It would certainly make his grip better.

The currents of the atlantic are always a gale and never a breeze, and he gets tossed down the cliffside more than once. More than once, he consigns himself to the depths and sulks on the seabed; more than once, he gets bored of the darkness again, and decides to try the climb one more time.

Simon loses count of the attempts, but eventually, he sees the sky -- for lack of a better term -- turn a few shades lighter. Slowly, _achingly_ slowly, the world around him changes from pitch black to navy blue. Eventually, he begins to be able to see the fish darting around him due to a dull silver flash, instead of a neon flicker.

 _Eventually_ , he hauls his weight over the edge of the continental shelf.

The lights of Omicron greet him, green and unfeeling. He has no idea where the elevator is in relation to his position. This time, he was his own climber.

He turns around to look at his footsteps -- small puffy clouds of marine dust kicked up by his oversized boots -- only once, before moving away from the edge.

* * *

When he first sees her again, she doesn't want to talk to him.

He didn't even _mean_ to find Theta, not really. He was just wandering around, exploring, trying to kill time. He thought that maybe if he just chose a direction and kept going in a straight line, he'd find himself walking up through the surf and onto a beach, at some point.

Instead, he finds the ghost of Robin Bass.

"You lied." She says sulkily, waving one thin, functional arm at him. The clanking sound only seems to aggravate her further, and he resists the urge to tell her _well, not technically_. "You told me that it worked. You _told me_ that we were safe. I haven't seen anyone else since you! I've been sitting here, waiting, waiting, waiting..."

"I know, I'm sorry. I… I didn't know what to say."

"Then don't say anything!" She snaps, and turns her camera away from him. "Just leave me alone!"

He does, for a while. He trods off and inspects the local floral and fauna, but he never ventures too far from the light. As bizarre as it was to him at first, the looming structures of Pathos-II have started to feel like the safest thing around.

* * *

He wanders close enough for their version of hearing range, now and then. After a while, he hears her call him over.

"I'm still mad at you." Her voice crackles at the edges, but it's the voice of someone coherent. She isn't just spitting up phrases that she's heard. "But like I said, nobody else is around… So I don't have much of a choice. Can you help me up?"

If Simon still had a throat, he'd swallow anxiously.

"I can try, I guess." He doesn't want to promise anything he can't deliver.

He doesn't know anything about repairs, but Bass manages to talk him through it. He's reminded that fixing these machines was, at one point, her actual job. With her instructions, he pulls the limp tendrils from where they're curled around her parts, and snaps the panelling back into place where the roots popped them out. Eventually he gets her floating a foot or so off the seabed, listing slightly to the left. 

Bass hangs there for a moment, staring up at him. "Thanks." Is all she says, solemnly, before she turns to drift back towards Theta.

Simon has no idea where she's going, or what she'll do; but even _his_ curiosity isn't strong enough to make him follow after her.

* * *

It becomes easier, with time and experience, to differentiate the people from the copies. 

Or, maybe he shouldn't phrase it like that. It becomes easier, with time and experience, to differentiate the lucid from the imitations.

The mockingbirds still patrol both inside and out the remains of the complex, regurgitating the lines they've heard like subaquatic parrots. Without the WAU spooling instructions to _defend, protect, keep them safe_ , they're far less aggressive. And, it seems, without the WAU, the life is fading from them. Simon has nearly stumbled over a fair few lying on the seabed, already halfburied in silt by the current. None of them manage to say anything coherent, though one does startle him briefly when it reaches shakily for him as he passes.

It's hard to be frightened of something so sad.

* * *

The sentient ones, the ones he knows must have been stolen from a scan or sucked from a pilot seat, are considerably more difficult to deal with.

Some find their way to Theta on their own, drifting over the sandbanks and scree, or crawling down the train tunnels. One even takes a zeppelin, like he did however many weeks or months ago. 

They seem to all be universal helpers; most are UH3 bull models, and thankful for what limbs they do have. Rogers is one of the rare K8 helpers, and constantly gripes about his lack of them. Simon isn't entirely sure how to feel about being the only biped around.

Last names come back into fashion, for everyone but him. Bass still introduces him to every new arrival as _Simon, from Toronto_ , which he finds funny for some reason. But if she introduced him as _Simon from Upsilon_ , they'd expect him to have some kind of engineering skill, which he still gravely lacks.

At some point, they collectively give up on the pretense of air. Water puts less strain on their bodies -- many still feeling the effects of the WAU's corruption -- and nearly all the tools and electronics that they truly need are proofed.

What Simon begins to refer to as 'the yard' in front of Theta's airlock starts to look like a mechanical campsite. Small piles of debris start to accumulate, then take shape: into rusted iron shacks ( _for storage,_ says semken ) or patchwork leantos ( _for protection from the currents,_ says koster ), or miniature towers ( _i'm bored,_ says strasky ). The structures line either side of the walk out from Theta's airlock, and one of them deems it Main Street. 

Hart starts trying to cultivate seaweed, and soon there's a garden of trial and error just west of the encampment. Simon names it Victoria Park as a private joke, and is startled when even Hart herself starts referring to her collection of kelp and deep water corals by that same name.

He decides that, if the trend continues, he'll just skip over the Warden station.

* * *

Nobody seems to know who started it; but it spreads memetically through the residents, and suddenly their little settlement has a name.

An unfamiliar greek letter, belonging to none of the outposts, emblazoned into the side of a nearby building with shaky solder sparks: a shaky stylized V. 

The first time he spots it, he has to track down Bass and ask what it means, vaguely worried that somehow they've accumulated enough locals for _robot gangs_ to spring up. It looks fresh, untouched by algae or bivalves, so it must be a new development, had to have been one of them. Otherwise, they have much bigger things to worry about--

She just laughs at him, the lights embedded in her chest blinking in time. "No, dummy, it's just coptic! Or, well, I guess it's greek. I'm not big on the classics, you'll have to ask Masters." Her face swivels back and forth for a moment, a habit that Simon has come to recognize as her version of tilting her head thoughtfully. "I think she said that it's pronounced _Ni_ these days, but in the old alphabet it was _Nu._ "

Simon pauses for a long moment before he lets out the audio imitation of a sigh. He should really be used to scientists thinking that they're clever by now. Even if they're the ghosts of scientists.

* * *

The structures along Main Street have slowly been getting more densely packed, and start to pile on top of each other. It's not due to overpopulation; their numbers have grown steadily, but slowly. Simon might be the only one who notices, since nobody else has mentioned it.

Finally, he runs into Davis near the outskirts, repairing a sheet of corrugated iron that the currents had pulled out of place.

"Hey. What's with the uptick in construction?"

The bull jolts and rotates, turning towards him. "You haven't heard?" Davis chirps down at him, the single light in the middle of her face flashing. "We're seeing if we can get a proper transmission tower put together. If there's anybody left out there, they're not just going to happen to find us."

"That's a pretty big if." Is all that Simon can think to say.

The two arms fold up and lift slightly, a bull's version of a shrug. "What else have we got to do, now?"

He doesn't know what to say to that at all; so he says nothing, and Davis turns to continue her work.

* * *

The two digited claws that the helpers have to work with aren't particularly nimble, but the one resource they have in spades is _time_. That, and mechanical knowledge. So Simon really shouldn't be surprised when he starts seeing augmentations on the others. 

Some are functional: Rogers finally gets a working arm, with a great deal of belligerent delight. Others get extras, to make up for the clumsiness of the arms they already had. 

But what really surprises him are the aesthetic modifications. He spots them on Bass first, a series of curves carved into the flat surface of her side. The helmet of his suit means that she can't see him staring as he tries to puzzle out what it could be, with perfectly spaced points radiating out from a circle in the center.

He finally realizes that it's the impression of a flower; a stylized daisy, or maybe a crysanthemum. 

He tries not to wonder whether there are any flowers left on the surface, and silently decides that it's an anemone.

* * *

He's not sure why, but he seems to have become something of an unofficial leader, or at least advisor. Having survived a close encounter with the WAU earned him something a little like street cred. The helpers appear a little more at ease with him around.

Nonetheless, he's been thinking idly about leaving to make a trip, when Rogers brings it up for him. "We're thinking about sending a team down to Phi. You know, see if there's anything salvageable, maybe get the space gun running again…" 

Simon's told them that it collapsed, so he doesn't mention it again. He knows that he remembers, has the knowledge stored in his memory banks, and is willfully glossing over it.

"You'll have to go through Omicron, though." He says aloud, but it's mostly to himself. There's a copy of him somewhere in the complex, wearing Imogen Reed and a divesuit, wandering the halls or still sitting in the seat he downloaded out of. 

Simon doesn't particularly want his companions to meet his former self without him there to explain the situation. "Could you put it off for a little while? I should go with you, I've been down there before."

"So have plenty of us!" Wan bristles at the request, clicking his claws together. "If you want to come with us, that's one thing, but we can't delay the whole mission--"

"Why not?" Simon says simply, gesturing with his good hand. "The tower isn't finished yet, and nothing else is really pressing. You can wait a few days, right?"

Bass sighs, dropping slightly where she floats. "I guess so. You're right, it's not like we have a deadline. But now that we've decided, everybody on the team is itching to go." 

He feels a pang of guilt at delaying them, knowing how the boredom starts to feel like helplessness. "There's just… Something I have to do, alright? Back at Upsilon." 

" _What?_ Upsilon is closed up!" Strasky swivels his head between Simon and the others, his hands twitching with nervous energy. "What the hell is even _left_ there?" 

He tries not to glance up the slope towards where Azarro typically spends her time, trying to design some kind of aquatic birdcage to keep fish. Semken isn't often far.

"Look, I… When I first woke up, I was confused, I… I left some things how they shouldn't be. I have a chance now, to go back and fix it."

He can't stop thinking about the first sapient being he met here. About the way that he screamed; about the fact that the rest of the outpost is, for all intents and purposes, dead. If the circuitry keeping him in agony is still active, then Simon has to do something about it.

"There's something that I have to do." He tells them, and the worst thing is, he isn't lying.

He _has_ to.

So he bids them farewell, waving with his right hand, and trudges over the dunes of sand and marine snow that have come to mark the outskirts of their strange little town. _Leave the lights on for me,_ he jokes as he does. 

He knows he'll be back, regardless of what he finds at Upsilon. He knows that even if he didn't need to be there with them when they find their way into Omicron, he'd come back to Nu.

What else does he have to do, now?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i still owed tin a bit, and i still had ideas for this. 
> 
> this one is PROBABLY the last chapter, though. i might come back and make it a proper trilogy the next time i replay, but i've gotten most of this weird robot family out of my system for now.
> 
>  **content warnings** are the same as last time! the deep sea is horrifying.

It takes him a great deal less time to get to Upsilon than it did to get away from it. He doesn't even get waylaid by the lock systems like he thought he would: the communications tower has rusted through, and allows him easy access back into the main structure. Simon has dealt with his conscience ( and he's the only one who gets to know how that went, _ever_ ) and turned around to trudge back to the camp through open water in less than twentyfour hours.

So he doesn't even need the few days leeway he asked them for: he's making his way back onto Main Street in what's _technically_ a matter of hours. He forgot to check his internal clock when he left, but the sky was just turning light, so regardless of the season it couldn't have been later than ten in the morning. It's barely half past midnight when he gets back to Nu.

Still, _somehow_ , everything seems to have gone to _shit_ while he was away. He can hear it before he can see it, a low static babbling shortly before the chartreuse lights of Theta start to fade into view. The dirt and debris make the visual acuity short and foggy, but he can see the green halo just over the dunes and boulders that circle the main drag. As he gets closer, the glow sharpens into a swarm of lights, all twitching around each other like a disturbed hornets nest.

The shacks closest to the outpost long ago melded into it, and then the tower was built on the roof, to save them some height. It's a few storeys tall and not _quite_ pyramidal. It's too steep, jutting up from Theta's roof, and heavily reinforced: crowning the platform is a bunch of computers circling a huge metal ring. It serves as an anchor for the chain that connects the tower to the floating platform that hosts the satellite receiver. 

_That_ had been the hardest part, really. Constructing a satellite dish underwater that was _meant_ to function in air, but also be weatherproof… It took a number of failed experiments, ballooned to the surface with spare oxygen harvested from the gas pearling of Victoria Park, and carefully observed from the shelf. But eventually, _finally_ , they figured it out, and got it working, and then _immediately_ got it anchored. 

_Just_ before he left, actually.

It's been up and running reliably for a few days now, but only very patchily: the first day was spent on trips up and down its length to the surface, soldering creaky plates or hastily adding extra links to the anchor chain so that the waves wouldn't snap the line, or pull the entire platform from the seabed. They can't trust it to just drift about, and still be able to beam the signals down to them reliably. From what he hears later, there was a great deal of trial and error involved. 

It's easy enough for most of them to float above the ocean floor, but Simon doesn't have that luxury. He has to climb the outside of the structure where the helpers are swarming, waving his left wrist at them as he holds on with his good hand. "What's going on? What _happened?_ " He can't help but feel like it's his fault; nothing this big _ever_ happens when he's around; not anymore. Maybe if he'd stayed…

Fisher hovers a few feet above and beside him, waving his thin arms around as he babbles. "They did it! They _fucking did it!_ We're up there!"

Simon turns his helmet to the decorated bull coming around the side of the tower, its lights blinking with excitement. "Bass? That you? Can _you_ explain what the hell is going on?" It _is_ her, and her voice is upbeat, but there's an undertone of uncertainty. "Well, we actually managed to get the long distance radio system working. And we thought that would just sort of be the end of the project, you know? Just leave it up and running, kind of like the VLA, without too much reason to check in… We were starting to talk about getting to Tau, when…"

"We _received_ a transmission!" Fisher interjects, swimming closer to flash his headlights elatedly in Simon's face.

"What?" Simon turns up to stare at them, and the others clustered around the command console a few metres above him. "From where? Is there somebody still _up_ there?"

" _Way_ up there." Robin confirms, turning her head to look towards the faint glow from above; it's bright, right now. Must be morning in their timezone, at least above sea level. "It's not from earth, Simon. It's from the Ark."

He didn't know that he could still feel his blood run cold, without functional veins.

There's a version up there, that's not him, that gets to lounge around in eternal paradise while he whiles away the hours in perpetual dusk. That gets to talk to the few friends he's found since waking up at the end of the world. 

He can't help but feel a pang of jealousy.

When he gets onto the roof proper and makes his way over to the console, he can hear that he's not the only one.

Rogers is swaying from side to side in the water, bubbles trailing from him in thin streams as he gesticulates. "Why should we do anything for _them?_ They're the ones who lucked out! They _won_ the coin flip. They get to deal with everything that means, now."

"Don't be so spiteful. It's still a version of you, right? Don't you want them to be happy?" Strasky bobs up and down in the currents, his own arms hanging down limply below him. 

But even as Simon comes over the edge of the roof, Rogers won't have any of it. "What if there _isn''t_ a version of us up there? Not all of us got scanned in at the same time, and who knows if crybaby doctor actually managed to put all of us in?"

"She did." Simon says quietly as he steps over to them, and a hush goes through the assembled helpers. 

Bass trails after him quickly, putting a rudimentary hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure he didn't mean it. We _all_ know how hard Simon and Catherine _both_ worked to get the Ark up there, right?" Her camera swivels to stare at all of them in turn.

He softens up at the way that a dozen machines without faces manage to look bashful.

"It's alright, Robin." He makes his way to the console, looking it over with sudden uncertainty. "So, uh, what… Is it like a phone, or email, or what?"

"It's actually a beam waveguide long distance radio." Comes the muffled voice from the speakers, and Simon jolts. So do half of the bulls. Rogers taps Davis on the hull disconsolately, hissing; _"You said it was push to talk!"_

" _Cath?_ Is that really you?" He leans forward and grabs the edge of the console with one hand, his eyes moving over the screen to look for the little portrait of her that he remembers so well. 

Apparently the previous argument isn't enough to turn her off. "The one _and only!_ Well, you know. Close enough." She laughs, and he wishes he could smile at her and have her see it, because of how genuinely happy she sounds. "It's so good to know that you're alright! With the gun collapsing like that, I didn't think you'd make it."

 _I didn't,_ he bites back, _the other me did._

Instead, he looks back at his physical companions. Strasky is drooping slightly in the water, Hart manages to look hopeful with a bull's face, Fisher is still floating a few metres away, and Bass looks as close as a camera lens can to thoughtful. 

"So, uh. Cath. what was that favor you wanted?"

It turns out that what they wanted is for them to try and fix the Omega space gun. Catherine said that all systems were optimal for now, and the solar panels were working at full capacity, but wouldn't it just be better to be safe? If they had a functional gun, they would at least have the _option_ to send them supplies or repairs.

Before Simon had shown up, nobody thought to mention that they were already considering trying this. 

He spills the beans, and Rogers snarls that he gave away their only leverage. Simon quietly reminds everybody within earshot that if they could get into orbit, there might be _some_ way to download themselves in. You know. If that's what they want.

In the silence the follows, the ocean seems to be breathing around them, the currents _woosh_ ing through the tower sounding almost like a heartbeat. He wonders briefly what the breathless void of space might be like.

"Okay." Bass says finally, drifting over to the screen. "Alright. We'll see what we can do at Omega. Between all of us, there must be _something._ Right?"

Simon doesn't have the heart to correct her.

* * *

The renewed interest in the space gun makes their expedition group swell in numbers, and a sizeable portion of their little outpost is suddenly outfitted for the abyss. Tentatively, Simon asks one of the ( former? late? ) engineers to put something together for his hand. Or rather, his lack of one. The small helper tilts down to look at him, and refuses to make any promises.

They get into Omicron the same way that he did, and Simon leads them through the hallways with newly uncharacteristic caution. Wan observes that most of the tech in the place has been ripped apart; computers, and plumbing, and tools, and WAU shells alike. 

But they make it to the port, and Simon breathes a sigh of relief when he ducks to the side and his double isn't sitting in the closet opposite the door. They have to call the lifter back, though, since he climbed back up on his own, and the wait is agonizing. While the other bots start chatting, Simon keeps peering around apprehensively, and he's the one who jumps most violently when there's a clang from the next room.

Unblinking red eyes from behind a divesuit mask stare at _all of them_ when the door slides open.

"Uh," Simon says, silhouetted from behind by the brighter hallway lights. "Who the hell are you?"

* * *

He's been here the whole time, it turns out. He's the reason for the destruction around the station, not the WAU. He explains that it wasn't malicious, just… Ignorance, apparently. He was trying to see if he could build anything to take him down into the abyss, a replacement for the Dunbat, perhaps. In the interim months, he's stripped the base down to its bones, like the crabs that Simon saw picking apart the larger carcasses down on the bottom, leaving only the ribs. When they even had bones.

After introductions and the prerequisite awkward explanation from Simon, the… _other_ Simon is absolutely thrilled to see them. When the WAU was finished with its last death throes and its proxies faded from the station, he was left with no one to talk to but old journal logs. It's been a long time, for him.

There's an argument; thankfully held a few rooms away from the rest of the squad. The last Simon -- 2.0, he guesses; which would make him 3.0, wouldn't it? -- wants to go down with them, to finish the journey that he was forced to stop midway through. If all the others can go deeper, why can't he? But the tools that bulked up the helper's armor are back at Nu, and there's nothing left to be scavenged from Omicron. 

He understands that part is his fault, at least. Simon 2.0 grumbles, but eventually accepts. He has no choice. If he follows them down, the water will crush him, and only him. 

Simon knows that he'll find the outpost. The communications tower is half as tall as the Curie by now, and… Well. He got this far, didn't he? He's a Simon. He'll find his way.

They listen, and they adjust, and they _adapt_. They survive.

It's arguable whether that's a pro or a con.

* * *

He isn't looking forward to another trip in the climber. He tells himself that at least this time, there'll be no WAU phantoms ambushing him on the way down; but it's still unnerving to watch the light fade so steadily. He'd gotten used to the dim but reliable cycle of the day up on the plateau.

The lifter is crowded this time, and Rogers has to spiral around outside the cage, following them down as they sink. The mood isn't particularly cheerful. All of them have been reinforced and prepared as best they could be for the pressure of the abyss, but they haven't exactly had the chance to test that yet. Half a dozen metal bodies begin to creak, and there's the indescribable feeling of several people without lungs holding their breath. And, equally bizarre, simultaneously letting it out when they all reach the bottom intact.

Simon sighs and steps off the platform, peering around at the gorge they've landed in. "Alright, you guys know the way, right?" He doesn't wait for an answer as he starts up the slope.

* * *

The launcher is in shambles. With his flashlight fixed and all of the others similarly outfitted, he can see the full scope of the wreckage that he climbed out of. They meander along the dark, broken spine that was once the barrel of the space gun, its structure having broken into several pieces and collapsed, many segments partially buried in sediment already.

Simon is at a disadvantage down here, being unable to _really_ swim; his suit, his body, is too heavy. But he tries to follow them anyway, and catches up again when they've gathered around the main cannon.

Strasky is dipping around the curve of it, his light focused on the huge, dark grey tube that used to be the barrel of a gun. "Can we use it for scrap, maybe?" 

"Nah, see? It's already starting to rust now that it got busted." Wan's eyebeam and one of his arms point downwards, drawing attention to a dark red splotch, like a bloodstain, with a smattering of tiny barnacles clustered around the edge. The sea is starting to reclaim Omega. "Once the base broke, salt water could get in where it shouldn't. The metal's no good."

"Well, we've found ways to work with weird materials in an airless junkyard. Maybe grab a sample for somebody back at Nu to test?" Strasky's tone is light as he turns around to wander back towards Phi. He doesn't like the abyss very much, and everybody knows he's happy to exit. 

Simon snaps his fingers, even though it doesn't make a noise. "That's it!" He points at the the little helper unit, as the others turn to look at him. "If there's no hope of repairing the Omega space gun, why don't we build a new one? We can at Nu, right?"

There's a moment of silence, before several of them laugh. "Do you have any idea how complicated this thing was?" Wan says with a snort, drifting closer to look down. "Who knows how long it would take to get something even _remotely_ close to functional in the same way--"

"We've got a bunch of genius scientists, plenty of tools and materials. And what else have we got to do, now?" Simon shoots back, crossing his arms. What Davis said has been turning around in his skull -- in his processor -- for weeks. If they have nothing to do at the end of the world, they might as well _make_ something to do. "Besides, you guys got a radio tower working from the bottom of the sea! I bet if we work together, we can do _anything_. Don't you want at least the _option_ of getting up to the Ark?"

Strasky perks up, having floated back over to the main gathering. "Hey, that's right! We can ask the folks on the Ark for help, too. They have an interest in this… Emergency repairs, right?"

The rest of the assembled murmur among themselves. "Hrmph." Rogers snorts again, tucking his single arm up under his rounded body. "Like _they'll_ be any help."

* * *

They turn out to be _a lot_ of help.

As soon as he gets back, Simon finds out that his other self has been chatting it up with _the Cath in the sky_ \-- largely getting filled in on what happened after he was downloaded. Or copied. Or _whatever_ ; the few times that they do talk, they try not to dwell on it. He's become the representative for the colony, passing on questions in a more palatable way than most of the helpers around can manage. The scans on the Ark don't even have to be _present_ to make things tense with those left behind. 

But they _are_ useful, especially since Catherine's catalogue is a lot more complete than the chance sparks of life that populate Nu. It takes her no time at all to sniff through the database and find somebody who worked on the Omega space gun, and barely any more time than _that_ to have a set of schematics drawn up from his memory. 

In fact, it takes longer to download, with their relatively oldfashioned wireless connection. The miles of saline don't help with reception, either.

 _But,_ , they have the plans. They have the means. Now Simon just has to hope that they have the motivation.

* * *

There's another double when they get back, as well. To be honest, Simon is surprised that it took this long. Technically, there's two; but since Wan was on the expedition with them, the residents had been able to avoid that awkward conversation. 

To Simon's surprise, Hart gets along quite well with herself. When he eventually works up the courage to ask her about it -- _both_ of her, he wouldn't go behind one's back -- she giggles in stereo and both of her wave an arm dismissively. "It just means the workload is smaller! More hands, and all that." Shes seems very happy tending the aquatic flowerbeds; it's flourished even since Simon left. She'd managed to find and transplant some deep sea corals, adding a nice zen garden kind of touch. A small burst of red octocoral reminds him of the maple trees in fall. 

Of course, the Wans don't take it as well... But how is he to know for certain? Maybe the Harts clashed just as much when they were introduced. He was away, he has no proof. Both of the Brandons _do_ at least retreat from openly aggressive to passive aggressive, and Simon doesn't have to be reminded of _I trusted you, Chun! I trusted you!_ every time they disagree and start yelling.

In general, the residents of Nu seem to like the idea of trying to build their own space gun. There are those that want something to keep busy with, and those who hope it'll be their late ticket onto the Ark. Simon, strangely, just wants to make sure that in case of emergency, there'll be _somebody_ available, physically outside the machine. The solar energy will keep it going almost indefinitely, but what if the joint on one of those panels starts to fail?

He may not have won the coin flip, but he knows that the gamble itself had humanity riding on it. 

They choose a new location, a few miles from Nu itself. Simon only hauls out to the construction site a few times: it takes him about twice as long to walk there as it takes the others to swim. It's flat and relatively featureless, nestled between the empty Pathos-II labs, for protection from the currents. Aside from that, the main attraction is that there's a small dune in the middle of it that they can use for early anchoring. 

He calls it Summerhill; and after a day or two, so does everyone else. Some of the more practical minded call it Psi, so that it starts with the same syllable ( PSummerhIll, some joke ) or simply _the gunsite_. But the symbol they carve into the base of the barrel looks like a trident.

By the time he can see it from Main Street, it must be a mile tall.

* * *

They don't have much to celebrate, so they make do with what they have. Anything that breaks the monotony is a big deal: Azzarro's first successful generation of frye, Fisher's small soldered attempts at an art gallery showing, Davis' lecture on how the various important structures around Nu worked. A Sarang attempts a speech at the top of Maine Street, but is booed out of town. Nearly everything else that can be shared with the community is celebrated.

Simon's new hand is one of them. Between Thabo, Davis, and _another_ Davis, they find time between building the Psi space gun to make him a rudimentary set of digits that can connect with whatever structure gel is still in his system to keep him moving. It's not particularly pretty, but it's functional, and that's what matters.

They have a "dinner" to commemorate, with Simon sitting at the head of the table and handing out batteries with his new hand. It's their version of having him pour wine for his crew, when that would just be a waste. 

It earns him the nickname Captain Hook around the encampment. It's not particularly creative, but it helps differentiate him from the Other Simon a little more clearly, and makes conversations somewhat easier. He might even kind of like it.

* * *

The gun is nearly finished. It shouldn't be long now before they start testing, shooting packages of expendable junk into low orbit to make sure the liftoff won't kill anybody they try to send up. Even the tests have to be carefully planned, to make sure that the trash they launch into the lower atmosphere won't have any possibility of hitting the Ark, but Simon has faith. They're a bunch of genius scientists, after all.

And, at the end of the day, they don't really need him. He doesn't have any particular technological skill. He doesn't really have any particular skill _at all_ other than luck, and that's a stretch. And even if he _could_ be useful around the outpost, any task that he'd be good at is already managed by the other Simon. 

Before that, he was the closest thing to human that they had around, but 2.0 is one step back from him. More primitive, but also somehow more _real_. More friendly, too. He's adapted rather gracefully to being the second _Simon from Toronto_ to reside here, and doesn't even mind talking to the _Simon living on the Ark_. He doesn't seem to be envious at all.

* * *

So, there's not much use for the third iteration, here, is there? Captain Simon drums both sets of fingers -- three digits and five -- on the railing in front of him as he looks down at the strange bustle of downtown Nu. Main Street has become a lot less like a shantytown and a lot more like a street in an old town, like the photos he's seen of old european cities. Most of the structures are two storeys and many extend further upwards, with wide windows ( without glass ) and outdoor walkways to let the water blow through. Small schools of fish dart through the upper floors sometimes: Azzaro's pet fish have become quite popular, and adorn the balconies outside of many of the doors in round mesh cages. She's been talking about trying to breed for bioluminescence with gene samples from abyss, so that the domestic fish can replace the electric lights in the main hub.

It's a bizarre village, occupied by ghosts and their occasional mirrors, but it's a village nonetheless. And it seems perfectly capable of shambling, then walking, then running on its own. It's grown up, so to speak. It doesn't need him anymore.

So he thinks again of that initial idea of checking on what's going on, back on the surface. The Ark said that their scans didn't find anything promising, but isn't all they have is basic visual and heat cameras? It's perfectly plausible that they missed something. And if even just a fraction of the human population has the tenacity that they've shown, there must be _something_ left. That's what _makes_ them all human, right?

So he says his goodbyes again, but this time in a decidedly more permanent way. He makes sure to visit all of the landmarks beforehand: Victoria Park, High Park, Summerhill, and the apartment at the base of the communications tower once more. The goodbyes to his own self are the strangest. He tries not to be too stilted, or too bitter. He tries not to feel replaced in the community that he feels responsible for.

He sets off once more, his footsteps leaving a small smoky trail along the seabed as he heads towards the coast once again. He knows he'll be back, but this time, he has no idea how long it'll be. There's the very real possibility that he'll run down and be unable to come back; but he's still doggedly thinking of it as a return trip. He just wants to get _something_ from the surface: an artifact, a sign of life, a report of an encounter with survivors. He'll come back when he has at least one of those.

Because the other survivors _need_ to know about Nu. He owes them -- the _them_ above sea level and the _them_ below it -- that, at least. He can bring a tidbit of hope; in _either_ direction. If nothing else.

What else does he have to do, now?


End file.
